Now and Then, But the Difference Means Nothing
by conclusivelead
Summary: Sam needs Dean now more than yesterday and tomorrow more than now. “It’s loss without loss, because Dean didn’t get taken from him this time: he chose to let Sam go, and that makes all the difference.” D/S; introspective, dark, angsty. S3 fin. - S4 fin.


**Author**: conclusivelead.  
**Title**: Now and Then, But the Difference Means Nothing.  
**Rating**: R.  
**Word Count**: ~4,000.  
**Inspiration**: Belatedly inspired by Loki's vid Ease My Pain. About halfway through this I got stuck, so I went a'searchin' for some inspiration and Loki (SecretlyToDream - Youtube) gave me plenty.  
**Summary**: "It's loss without loss, because Dean didn't get taken from him this time: he _chose_ to let _Sam_ go, and that makes all the difference." Somewhere between Dean dying and Dean realizing there's more darkness in Sam than he'd known, between Sam losing Dean and Sam realizing that there's more darkness in himself than he'd let in, Sam Winchester sees that he needs his brother now more than yesterday and tomorrow more than now.  
**Disclaimer**: I don't own Supernatural, which is the product of (mostly) the brilliant mind of that god/jerk/badass Kripke. This wasn't written for profit and nothing is gained by its publication here except personal satisfaction. :D  
**Author's Notes**: This was a bitch to write. I got way too emotionally involved, I think, and ended up depressing myself hardcore. x_x Despite it's rather terse length, it took me around three months to get it completely written the way I wanted it written, and even now there are some things I'm not satisfied with. But therein lies the rub, as they say, and I was ready to say it was finished. Enjoy. :3

NOW AND THEN, BUT THE DIFFERENCE MEANS NOTHING  
_The only thing you can rely on is that you can't rely on anything.  
_- Placebo

01

He can't really think very well just **now**.

There's this fog – this strange, disorienting fog that blinds his vision and surrounds his perception like a familiar disease, familiar but confusing like then – familiar from the days when Sam wanted no more days, wanted nothing but stillness, darkness.

Nothing but nothing, kind of like now.

Lilith's blood is spreading across the floor, stretching out into something. If Sam could only see past the fog, he thinks he'd be able to make out what it is, but he can't. His eyes see but are blind, and all he knows is the stab of regret deep, deep inside him, regret that he's failed, that there's nothing else he can do, that Dean will never forgive him.

It's a pain that he's not sure he understands anymore. Loss and pain are the best of friends – with one there's almost always the other. Except Sam isn't really sure just what he's lost this time.

Dean is alive.

It still gives him a thrill to think about it, to remember that there's no need for dark rooms and broken bottles and cheap sex, that the reason for his devastation is completely gone, that he doesn't need to worry about living the rest of his life alone.

There's no need for that. It's over.

It's over.

But it's not over. The fog is insistent – it wraps around his head and fills his eyes and his nose and his mouth and his ears until everything, every shred of his perception is just this… big, white cloud. It's all white noise, and he tells himself that the pain will go away, but this time, like last time and the time before that and so many times before that even (times he's pretty sure are the same as last time but then again might not be), he's not so sure.

It's loss without loss, because Dean didn't get taken from him _this_ time: he chose to let _Sam_ go, and that makes all the difference.

These things, these choices, are what separate the **now** from the **then**.

02

At first, it feels like the hole in his chest is just that – a hole.

His chest and its contents are carved away - left bare - the instant Sam looks down and realizes that the body on the floor is not his brother anymore. It's just another corpse, another casualty in the war that is their – Sam's life. The tears come and they fall and Sam sits there with his brother for as long as is safe and longer, unable to think, unable to move, trying to adjust to breathing without the piece of himself that is suddenly, devastatingly, gone.

But the hole in his chest – the realization that he was unable to protect his big brother – isn't the source of the self-hate that begins to take over. Because while there is pain and grief and so much more…there is also a kind of relief that Sam isn't sure he wants to admit he feels.

It's over, the anticipation of Dean dying. He realizes that he's a greedy, selfish bastard, because the past year has been filled with fear. Unbearable, difficult, hard to understand completely, but fear nonetheless in that it was easily identifiable and impossible to live with.

But the fear he's been feeling has been for his own loss. He's been so afraid to live without Dean that he never really put much thought into how it would be for Dean to know that he was going to Hell, that one place that Sam couldn't reach him, the only place that he'd be completely without Sam forever.

And when Sam realizes that the last year of his brother's life was made up of well-hidden terror and anticipation of an eternity of pain, sleeplessness, and horror, he just wants to die.

But dying would be too easy…

…so he doesn't.

After a while, the hole heals over, scarred and no longer a gaping wound in his chest, but still sensitive and sore and throbbing.

There are millions of things every single day that rub up against that scar tissue – things that remind him of Dean.

A Styx song on the radio.

A billboard advertising junk food.

The Impala.

Everywhere he looks there is something that tears away a little bit at the protective cocoon he has wrapped himself in. Every day he is forced to rebuild a little part of his shield, force the pain away, to think of other things.

The scar-growth eventually turns into something else, something darker. Sam needs to stay on top, needs to keep going, needs a way to make himself ignore the bottle of Aspirin in his bag/on the kitchen table/in the bathroom cabinet and go to sleep sober, clean, without influence. More than once, he just wants to grab that bottle and down it, allow his eyes to shut, allow that growth to ease for a final time as Sam settles back into sleep in some cheap hotel in some nameless town, nameless state, nameless place.

He doesn't grab the Aspirin bottle, though. There are countless battles with his subconscious –

_Just take a few more of those tiny white pills and this will all be over…_

_…no more pain…_

_…no more waiting for solutions that will never come…_

_…no more._

Sam wants to be whole again, wants to feel something other than pain and helplessness and dark, dark hate. He wants to kill, wants to hurt, wants to make other people feel the way that he feels, wants to share his misery with the world. It takes a lot to keep going, keep waking up every morning.

For the first few weeks, it's a chore to drag himself out of a drunken stupor long enough to shower, long enough to change his clothes, long enough to wash away the smell of stale alcohol and vomit and limitless, endless pain. He wants to drive himself to kidney failure, to alcohol poisoning, wants to die.

The physical pain doesn't bother him.

The hangovers are a joke. The headaches, the nausea, the constant, constant need to pop that Aspirin (no more, no more, no more) and dull that ache, and he does pop an Aspirin, chases it with whiskey or beer or vodka, whatever's close at hand, really, and he waits for the pain to go away, for things to be okay again.

The headaches go away, the nausea dissipates, the physical aspect is under tight, medicated control, but there is still hurt, still an ache that doesn't want to go away, that is settled in the back of his heart, throbbing – an open sore at the bottom of his stomach that is temporarily numbed by the Aspirin and the alcohol and the women (who come after the alcohol sometimes, but usually with it, too), but overall is just irritated further by the treatment.

03

**Now** Sam's not sure if the remembering is good or bad, because at first it seems like thinking about **then** is helping the **now**, helping thin the fog, but then again he could be imagining it.

He can't even tell whether it's black fog or white fog now.

He thinks it's probably white fog, but the white looks black and it suffocates him, twisting around his tongue and forcing itself down his throat until even the ability to tell Ruby that I can't fucking believe that you've done this to me, to us is gone, and all that's left is **then**.

04

Sam remembers he is the good kid.

Dean is always the rebellious one, the one that flexes his muscles whilst in the grips of authority, and there is a certain routine that they unconsciously fall into over the years that seems to sort of just manifest itself wherever they go.

They are always being pulled out of one school district and then haphazardly thrust into a new one depending on whether or not Dad thinks that it's safe enough for them to be away from him. And it isn't very often that Dad ever takes longer than a couple of days to a week on an assignment, so Sam learns to walk into a new school with his eyes on the floor, his backpack gripped tight, and his mouth sealed shut.

No talking, no smiling, no interaction at all. It's safer that way – easier.

Sam keeps himself separated from the crowd, seeks self-imposed solitude and isolation, doesn't make friends, doesn't try to socialize at all, with anyone – not teachers, not other students.

Dean has his own defense mechanisms, so to speak. He's so totally different, on the opposite end of the spectrum – as it always is (was?) with them.

His big brother is just so larger-than-life; Sam suspects that even if Dean would try to blend in at one of the dozens (hundreds, thousands?) of schools they've attended, it would be a failed attempt. Sam never gets to see what would happen if Dean decided to just stay quiet at school, stay unobserved and unimportant. Wherever they go, the same routine ensues.

Sam is quiet, and Dean sticks out like a sore thumb. Dean is a flash of brilliant, eyebrow-raising energy and scandal for a week and then he just disappears – no explanations, no promises.

Sam always wonders what the girls that Dean leave behind think of this.

Well, he knows what they think of it. They probably call him a jerk and a user and go on with their less-than-interesting lives, bringing him up every couple of months with their friends and talking about that week when the really attractive guy named Dean came, stirred things up, and then just up and left without a look back.

He looks at those girls, the new ones in front of him, arms wrapped around Dean, and the old ones, fuzzy and not-really-there inside his memory, and he is jealous even though they mean nothing to his big brother.

He just always wonders…he doesn't know what he wonders.

Wonders whether Dean's brief influence – his short, shining time amongst those random populations – make any real difference in the lives that he touches so shortly, so quickly, so indefinitely. He wonders if people look back on Dean and see a lesson they had learned.

Sam wonders if people remember at all. It seems impossible, impossible that anyone could forget his big brother and the good heartedness that seems to just shine through all the noncompliance. Sam wonders if Dean leaves much of an impact on those kids at those schools, the kids that Sam can't really remember – nameless faces, all with the same attitude problems and condescending stares and unfriendliness unless they find out that 'Hey, wasn't that Winchester's kid brother?' And then they are all 'hello's and welcoming grins and acceptance.

The fakeness of it all – the false affability, the forced kindness…it just makes Sam sick, and he would rather be alone and honest than in the middle of it all, but he relies on Dean. Dean is all he has - is really his entire world. Dean is his big brother, his best friend, his mentor. Dean has always taken care of him, fed him when he was too young to know how to make macaroni and cheese on his own, been his sympathizer and his nurse when he fell off his bike for the first time, taught him how to get free food from snack machines, trained him in how to win those ridiculous crane games that littered the convenience stores they frequent, everything. Dean's been more of a father to him than his father has ever been, and…

…Dean is Sam's world.

How could Dean not be everyone's world? Sam doesn't understand how other people function without a protective, constant shadow. How can those people just forget the one person in the world that has single-handedly taught him everything he's ever really needed to know?

The one person who's made sure that his childhood had some good times along with the ceaseless bad?

Dean must leave some sort of something behind them when they leave. Every school they've attended, he quickly makes friends, easily has a few different girls eating out of the palm of his hand. He's just so bursting with energy, with endurance, with life, that people seem to radiate toward him, drawn in by everything that he is, was, used to be, will be.

Sam wonders how any of those people, those people who come to him like flocks of sheep to a shepherd, could forget his green, green eyes, or the width of his white smile, or the freckles he regularly denies ever having.

Sam wonders how any of those people could take for granted what they had in Dean (you never appreciated him) – a tireless source of humor and entertainment and protection and love (you always told him he was overprotective, to back off some.) He blames those people for taking his presence for granted (why didn't you ever tell him how much you appreciate everything he does for you?), even though he doesn't know where they are or even who they are or anything at all, really.

Sam knows nothing.

He blames himself.

Dean is…was…

_"I'm not going to let you go to hell, Dean!"_

_"Oh, yes you are. Yes, you are. I'm sorry; I mean, this is all my fault – I know that. But what you're doing? It's not gonna save me. It's only gonna kill you."_

_"But what am I supposed to do?"_

_"…keep fighting."_

05

Sam doesn't want to hear anything she has to say **now**. Ruby is saying things to him, telling him that He'll be so grateful, that she can't believe that she's done it; she's so loyal, she's proven everyone wrong. The past months have been so difficult for her, have been so unbearable and all Sam wants to do is find Dean, is find an escape from Lilith's corpse, laying there like a leering I told you so and Ruby's teary self-satisfaction, Ruby's betrayal which reminds him so much of his own betrayal.

He can hear the words in his head like a broken record, over and over – "I don't trust her."

Dean's voice rings in his head, clears the fog for a second and he thinks he hears something, but he's not sure. There's blinding light to his right and Ruby to his left and Lilith on the floor like a haunting, laughing symbol of his failure.

His mind retreats into **then**.

06

Sometimes, when Sam is drunk, he'll drive out to the crossroads and bury a box, swigging vodka or whatever else is handy, and wait.

He'll wait and he'll wait until he realizes that no one is going to show up, that the demons have gotten tired of his constant, desperate pleas for death, for a switch, for anyone, please God anyone…save Dean.

Sam visits Dean's grave once or twice, but no more than that because he can't stand looking down and seeing dirt where his brother should be, of seeing a wooden cross where his best friend should be, of seeing the nothing that is left of the man that taught him everything, helped him with everything, meant everything.

Ruby returns, and Sam is more grateful for the familiar presence than he is comfortable admitting. He doesn't have anyone else, and suddenly whatever kept him from trusting her doesn't really matter anymore. He embraces her company and eventually her body and he doesn't second-guess it when she tells him he needs to get stronger if he's going to take down Lilith, and honestly – sending Lilith to Hell is all he wants anymore. All he needs anymore.

All that keeps him going.

If he stops for even a second, retreats into sobriety for even a moment, then Dean resurfaces in his mind, grinning, wide-eyed, and absent from his place in the Impala and in Sam's life and in his arms.

Sam looks down…Sam looks down and sees nothing, sees the ground, sees a bed, sees a cashier giving him a strange look, and all Sam can remember is now Dean could come back.

But he won't.

Sam doesn't think that if the circumstances were different that he would, either.

07

**Then** Sam is eight years old and struggling through some lewd romance novel in a motel room.

He can't remember the name of the motel or the name of the town or even the state, but he remembers that the walls are covered in peeling earth tones and the carpet is rough where it should be soft. The windows re clean on the inside but filthy on the outside, so the light that enters through them is dim and John Winchester insists they keep the overhead lamp on, even though Dean says the fluorescents hurt his eyes.

It is a basic setup, the same sort of room they always stay in: a suite with one bedroom and a sitting-area-slash-kitchenette.

He is curled up on the scratchy couch in the living area, trying to muddle through a paperback book that is old, ripped, and torn into a barely legible mess of pages. He finds it in a drawer, left behind by some unaware past guest and, being bored and generally curious, decides it is his best bet for some passing amusement.

Dean sits opposite him on the couch, legs kicked out across the top of the coffee table. He is watching something…daytime news? A soap opera? Sam really can't remember that part – just blurred figures moving across the television screen and distant voices. Whether those voices are announcing a robbery last night around 8 PM or declaring their undying, forbidden love is beyond him.

Sam has been eyeing his older brother for a couple of minutes and trying to decide whether to interrupt Dean's modest concentration on the television program when he finally figures that there isn't really much worse Dean can do to him than punch him in the shoulder once or twice and he tentatively asks, "Dean?"

His older brother grunts some, torn somewhere between continuing his moderate interest in the TV and turning to see just what Sam wants.

"Dean."

Dean's half-lidded gaze opens up a bit and his eyes slide over to Sam. He never can say no to the kid. "What's up, Sammy?"

Sam squints down at the book in his hands. He holds it close to his face and then farther away and then up close once more. Dean grunts again. "_What_, Sammy?"

"How do you say this word?" Sam taps the left side of the book with his right index finger. "S'spelled P-H-A-L-L-U-S."

For a moment Dean's face screws up, concentrating on putting the letters together into a word. Once he's figured out just what his younger brother is struggling with understanding, his eyes widen. "Jesus, Sammy, just what're you reading?!"

Sam calmly flips the front cover over, hands delicate in an attempt not to further rip the book's binding. He shows the title to Dean, and then he bursts into shrill, uncontrollable laughter as the older boy nearly swallows his tongue.

And Sam wants to laugh **now**, but he can't because this memory is just a gateway into another one and another one and then the most important one of all.

08

**Now, then, now, then** – the only thing that matters are the choices made, and the difference between his choice **then** and his decision **now** is infinitesimal.

Because **then** Dean died and **now** Dean's alive, but either way Sam still walked out the door and Dean's face is still bruised and their hearts are still broken and no matter what happens today…even if somehow things end up alright…one day Sam may still have to look down at Dean's corpse and that makes things not alright.

09

Rain is falling, splattering against the other side of the glass pressed against the back of Sam's head.

He is so uncomfortable, laying across the front seat and crushed beneath the weight of a full-grown man, but there's no place he'd rather be.

The Impala is stiff, angular, but friendly and familiar, and Dean's eyes glow in the dim light.

Dean's hands frame his face, not gentle, but welcome and warm, and what they're doing is so wrong and green eyes hold promise of more touching and Dean's lips are soft but Sam doesn't know that one day Dean will die, and another day Dean won't trust Sam anymore, so all that matters is that they keep touching.

But that was then.

END.


End file.
